


(the sky of the sky) of a tree called life

by from



Series: the parting line + outtakes [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Outtakes, POV Louis, POV Outsider, pilot niall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 18:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12731889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: Louis has a niche at the firm, a promotion in sight, and clients who don't know they're complicated.





	(the sky of the sky) of a tree called life

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [openhearts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts) for the beta edit. ♥

 

Niall Horan is the size of a chess piece crossing the grey square below before Louis turns away from the window. The room is so quiet, he can hear a lozenge rattling at the back of someone’s mouth.

 

Maybe it’s the enormity of the fight Horan has laid down in front of them. Maybe it’s the shock and bewilderment about his brother’s betrayal that, by the end of the meeting, his face couldn’t hide.

 

It feels like they’ve just walked out of a bloody Eugene O’Neill play where the director had decided there’d be no intermissions. Good fucking times.

 

But Louis can see the rewards ahead. Horan’s account has the potential to be massive. Each of the principals involved in the case would attract notice on their own, doubly so together. It’s the sort of work that’ll cement Louis’ position in the firm, no doubt about it.

 

He'll have to find a way to stay. He got in the room today only because they’d heard Horan might want some empathy about his late father.

 

El calls it ‘emotional work,’ but she’s a psychologist. It started with the dickhead who took Louis aside when he made associate and said, ‘Your mother died when you were still training, didn’t she?’ To which he replied, ‘Yeah, and my dad left when I was a baby. Do either of those things qualify me to help you with anything?’

 

Two years and one promotion later, it’s his unofficial niche in the firm. If he didn’t love IP law, he’d switch to private client work in a heartbeat. He’d already have the votes to be partner on that team.

 

‘Do you think that's all he wants?’ Louis glances at the yellow notepads and tablets on the round table, asking no one in particular.

 

‘To secure his father’s legacy?’ Richard says, and unusually, there’s no disdain in his voice. Heritage names like Sidwith tend to do that to people, Louis has noticed, but there’s something about Horan too. ‘We’ll find out, won’t we? I’ll get Basil and Cal on it.’

 

‘You'd think he'd be done grieving by now.’ Louis has never thought about it before, but he hopes Freddie wouldn’t be walking around with the same heavy eyes when Louis has been dead for years. ‘Eight years is a very long time.’

 

‘Maybe he's just getting started.’

 

Louis shakes his head and looks out the window again.

 

Horan is gone, but Sidwith is a prize and Louis knows the firm will be taking his case, even if it means going up against the in-house jackals at DAE. Jesus. The different teams the case will need. The hours they’ll be billing him. ‘Might be cheaper to get a bereavement therapist instead of taking on a multinational.’

 

‘Well, if he can't get Des Styles to vote with him, he might have to.’

 

Horan was the favourite son who would have taken over everything if his dad hadn’t died and he himself hadn’t fucked off to save strangers from famine and indiscriminate shelling. No chance he’ll be able to present himself as a moderate voice when the firm his dad loved is about to be cannibalised by one of the largest players in the defence industry.

 

‘He’s not going to get Des Styles to vote with him,’ Louis tells the room. ‘I want to start finding him another way.’

 

 

 

#

 

 

As Louis predicted, Horan’s discussions with Des Styles went nowhere. Then came the proxy firm report recommending DAE’s buyout to the shareholders.

 

Horan leaves for ‘a mission’ – and Mei floats what Louis himself has wondered, if maybe their client is actually James fucking Bond – before showing up again, demanding a plan for the twelve-thousand Sidwith employees whom DAE would likely let go.

 

It’s grim. Louis knows the jobs and pension fund would be non-starters in the negotiations. The firm knows it too.

 

He never brings work home and he’d never break privilege. But, demoralised and desperately half-awake in bed, he tells Eleanor the modern parable of a moralistic humanitarian who seems deeply traumatised by his family history and has decided to battle a capitalist war machine as therapy.

 

‘Well,’ Eleanor shrugs from behind her tablet, ‘maybe he feels he hasn’t said goodbye to his dad.’

 

‘Are you saying this is him trying to say goodbye to his dad?’

 

‘Are you saying your client doesn’t live his life like it’s an operetta?’

 

She yelps when he goes for her waist and pulls her down to tickle her.

 

Having her laughing face over him and hearing her snorts, he’s overwhelmed by how lucky he is and lets her go. She topples onto him and lets out another yelp, her plaits blinding him.

 

‘All right, I’m sorry! Stop attacking me,’ he says, trying to brush the weaponised hair away.

 

El swears at him but kindly sorts out how they’re going to carry on falling asleep without further risk to life and limb. ‘It’s unfinished business, isn’t it?’ she says after lying down and appropriating half of his memory foam pillow. ‘Everybody carries around things they’ve not got over.’

 

He breathes her in. ‘Like you and me before we got back together.’

 

‘Yeah,’ she says, cradling his cheek in her palm. ‘Like you and me.’

 

He remembers how grateful he was for her friendship when Mum passed, for the way she stepped back graciously into his life afterward. He remembers the courage he got from her, the proof every day that he didn’t lose himself along with his mother and he could still trust who he was when life inevitably had to go on.

 

In the morning, doing a very decent job on her almond pancakes, Louis decides Horan needs more than teams of lawyers and solicitors. He needs allies.

 

‘Niall, it’s Louis,’ he says as soon as they’re connected.

 

‘Hey. Louis. How are you?’

 

‘Louis Tomlinson.’

 

There’s a low, sleepy chuckle and the sound of a window – a door – being opened to the trilling of birds before he hears, ‘Yes, I know. I recognised your voice and actually, you’re the only Louis who has this number.’

 

‘Well, how about that,’ Louis grins. ‘Listen, Niall, I’m calling on a Saturday because we need to start thinking about getting in touch with the other named descendants. Gemma and Harry. See if they have any sway over their dad. You up for it?’

 

‘Am I up for it? Not exactly. But you know what, last night, I was just thinking the same.’

 

 

 

#

 

 

‘No. If Gemma says she tried her best, she did.’

 

‘What about her brother?’

 

Niall makes a small, amused noise. ‘They’re a pair of odd socks, Harry and Des. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think Des has ever given Harry a reason to care about Sidwith.’

 

‘So, he’s not going to be of any help either way.’

 

‘I wouldn’t say that. It’s in his blood as much as it is in mine.’

 

Louis has seen Niall angry and sad before, but never sentimental. He glances at the findings about the marriage clause, stuck in the back of one of the draft reports as an appendix with a cautiously blank heading.

 

He waits.

 

‘The one plane I had the chance to help my dad with was the Aquila R-38,’ Niall says, his eyes far away. ‘Harry was the first person I took flying in it. Had him screaming with my showing off. But I knew he’d love it as long as he trusted me, and he did.’

 

‘He trusted you as in, that’s a heartwarming story and in hindsight, he had a good time, or he really did trust you and he might still trust you now?’

 

Niall laughs before he seems to consider the question and grimaces. ‘Now? Hard to say. Haven’t seen or spoken to him in years.’

 

It doesn’t bode well for Plan B, but it’s still the best out of their bad options and financially, the cheapest.

 

‘Back then, Harry had a thing about heroes. Like all boys did, I suppose,’ Niall says, eyes fixed on his own hands over the glass table. ‘My dad was definitely one of his. Harry really cared about what Bobby thought of him.’ He clears his throat, the hands disappearing into the pockets of his grey jacket.

 

‘I could tell him Bobby wouldn’t agree with what my brother is doing. It’s true and it’s worth a try. I’m sure he’ll hear from Greg too, and I can tell you right now, Greg will have a hard time convincing Harry that Bobby would want DAE to buy Sidwith and tear it apart,’ he adds. ‘Of course, I still don’t see how Harry is going to be able to sway Des about this and ultimately, it’s Des who’ll be voting.’

  
Louis stayed later than late the night before with one of the senior partners, ostensibly for a review of his ongoing cases but in truth, to privately air his concerns about bringing a delicate and very much off-the-books strategy to a desperate client.

 

The way Niall is telling him stories about Harry Styles, not the pop heartthrob but Niall’s childhood friend who believed in heroes, has fucked up the contents of the Pros and Cons columns in Louis’ head. He can’t remember anymore what was under one and what was under the other. But he knows the time to bring up Plan B is now.

 

‘There is a clause,” Louis begins, and carefully, exhaustively, explains what they’ve found.

 

Niall’s eyes are unreadable, but his jaw is clenched tight through it all. When Louis is done, Niall takes a sip of water and says, voice husky, ‘If there’s a marriage between two of us, Des’ vote comes down to Harry and Gemma, the way Bobby’s came down to me and Greg when he died.’

 

‘Yes,’ Louis says with a polite nod and leans back. ‘Is that even remotely a possibility?’

 

‘If you’re asking if there’s a chance I’d marry one of them, then yes. For this, yes.’

 

‘Is there a chance one of them would marry you?’

 

‘For this, yes.’ A solid answer, just like the one before, and it feels as if a drum is starting to beat, as if the case is finally getting its legs. ‘But I won’t lie to them. I’ll tell them—’

 

‘Stop right there. I can’t have a reason to be unsatisfied that your plans to marry have nothing to do with any gains you might make, financial or otherwise, from the sale of Sidwith.’

 

‘Christ. Of course. Yes.’ Niall shakes his head. ‘Of course.’

 

‘There isn’t much time, as you know,’ Louis says, moving on. ‘Whatever happens now has to happen at a pace, and you’ll want to have keepsakes. Photos, e-mail, text. An announcement in The Times. It’s probably going to test your comfort, and theirs.’

 

The look of alarm on Niall’s face disappears as quickly as it came, his eyes crinkling as he laughs, ‘Well, Greg and his wife are throwing a massive party in a couple of weeks. I’d like to think my brother would be happy to see me in love.’

 

 

 

#

 

 

When Harry Styles walks into the office two months later to sign his prenup, Louis wants to put a paper bag over his brand-new client’s head so everyone would stop not-so-furtively staring and get back to work. When Niall walks in five minutes behind Styles and they share an awestruck glance before rushing into small talk about their respective mums and bloody warthogs of all things, Louis wants to put a bag over both their heads, but that’s because the poor bastards really are in love.

 

He stops himself from pulling Niall into one of the soundproofed meeting rooms to shout at him, ‘Do you know this is now a thousand times more complicated? I’ll ring my Eleanor and she’ll tell you that. Even my seven-year-old can fucking tell you that. I can ring him too.’

 

Because if he did, he thinks he would then crush Niall in a hug and tell Styles he’d better not fuck it up because Niall is the best he’s ever going to find. He would also run upstairs to the equity partners’ floor and tell them the good news that no one attached to the Sidwith case is likely to go to prison for fraud.

 

A little restraint is in order. He’s making partner in two years. In a year if they pull this off. When the case is over, he’ll take Niall to a pub and shout at him there. Styles he’ll deal with in due course, possibly with a couriered delivery of too much paperwork.

 

He files a memo to the higher-ups about the prenup signing and devotes a quotable paragraph to the relationship he is coming to know, starting with that ridiculous story about a plane and two boys falling and righting in the sky.

 

 

 

~

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [on tumblr](https://fromward.tumblr.com/post/167504602359/the-sky-of-the-sky-of-a-tree-called-life) :)


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